(AP) ASSOCIATED PROPAGANDA
EVAGORAS
(AP) ASSOCIATED PROPAGANDA
HISTORY OF A "NEWS" SERVICE
By Uri Dowbenko
Media Columnist
udow...@nitronews.com
The secret history of the Associated Press reveals a
pro-establishment, anti-populist bias that stretches all the way
back to its origin.
As an aside to a true life crime story, historian J. Anthony
Lukas describes the beginnings of the ubiquitous AP in his book
Big Trouble.
Lukas contends that in the early days of the twentieth century,
"Americans were aghast that a great octopus like the AP could
embrace eight hundred member papers, putting its product before
as many as twenty-five million readers every day."
Even then, AP's homogenized and biased stories, masquerading as
"objective" journalism, were offensive to American readers.
"'Here,' wrote one stupefied editor, 'is the most tremendous
engine for power that ever existed in this world. If you can
conceive all the power ever wielded by the great autocrats of
history, even that would be less than the power now wielded by
the Associated Press.'"
Of course, this assessment was made long before the inevitable
orchestration of radio, television and the press into what CIA
operative Frank Wisner liked to call the "Might Wurlitzer" of
Big Media Cartel propaganda.
"The AP's puissance was measured as much by organizational rigor
as by sheer size, for in an era of trusts, it was one of the
nation's most effective monopolies," continues Lukas.
"A newspaper with a precious AP franchise was protected against
any competitor in its territory seeking one, while the AP itself
had dread powers to discipline a paper that dealt with a rival
news service."
A parallel situation in history, of course, is the
Rockefeller-controlled Standard Oil Trust, which through
corporate-mob tactics, indistinguishable from organized crime,
succeeded in monopolizing the entire oil industry in the United
States.
But how did AP get that way?
"In 1898, facing charges of trafficking with the enemy, the
Chicago 'InterOcean' challenged the AP's structure in court,"
writes Lukas. "When the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the suit,
finding that the AP was 'so affected with a public duty' that it
must provide its news to any applicant, the AP abruptly
dissolved as an Illinois corporation and reorganized in New
York, this time not as a business corporation but as a mutual
association - like a literary society or fishing club -
permitting it arbitrarily to expel any member who protested
publicly against the way the organization was run. Henceforth
all insurgency was doomed."
In its new incarnation, disguised as a co-operative, Associated
Press was able to smash any resistance to its heavy-handed
tactics.
In a prescient analysis of today's interlocking corporate-based
monopoly media cartel, Lukas writes that "to its critics, the AP
was fond of stressing this 'mutuality,' arguing that it was
merely a 'clearing house' drawing news primarily from its
members and distributing it to other members."
"In fact, the AP stood for the notion that news was private
property, fiercely retaliating against anyone who poached on its
preserve," reveals Lukas. "It was dominated by an inner circle
of large metropolitan newspapers that at the time of the
service's reincarnation in 1900 had each purchased a thousand
dollars in bonds worth forty votes, compared to the single vote
held by ordinary members."
Redolent of the operation of the Federal Reserve and its
privately-owned magical money machine, the newsmongers of
Associated Press have a similar monopoly in the distribution of
what passes for "information" and a daily record of events which
eventually become "history."
"Buttressed by this margin, old-guard papers like the Chicago
Tribune and the Washington Star were firmly in the saddle,"
continues Lukas. "Where it drew news from a member paper, which
generally supported the community's most substantial interests,
the AP reflected the outlook of that city's power structure."
Currently, AP's offices in New York's Rockefeller Center reflect
the globalist nature of the media establishment's concerns for
tight rigid news control and the subsequent molding of public
opinion.
For Upton Sinclair, writes Lukas, "the AP's vast reach ensured
that American public opinion was 'poisoned at the source.'" (By
the way, where does your hometown paper get its so-called
"news"?)
"In large cities and some state capitals, the AP maintained
bureaus staffed by its own men, and to cover major events, it
dispatched its own reporters," writes Lukas. "But that did
little to diversify the AP's menu. To Oswald Garrison Villard of
New York's Evening Post, the AP had 'always bowed down before
authority and rarely ever stood up to the government in any
controversy.'"
AP remains the same yesterday, today, and most likely tomorrow.
The wide variety of internet news sources, however, as well as
alternative media must be anathema to the control freaks of the
Big Media Cartel.
Interestingly enough, the origin of mandatory public education
in America is based on a similar agenda. The late 19th century
Minnesota Congressman and author Ignatius Donnelly believed that
"it was foisted on Americans, so that children would be able to
read the newspapers, the propaganda sheets of the ruling elite."
Donnelly himself said as much. Around 1890, he wrote that "the
rich men owned the newspapers and the newspapers owned the
readers. If the public had not been able to read and write, they
would have talked with one another upon public affairs and have
formed some correct ideas; their education simply facilitated
their mental subjugation."
So-called education, after all, is about the control of minds.
According to historian and former Hoover Institution scholar
Antony C. Sutton, author of America's Secret Establishment, "any
group that wanted to control the future of American society had
first to control education, i.e. the population of the future."
Sutton asserts that "this was the victory of the Hegelians, who
believed that the State is superior to the individual. Prussian
militarism, Naziism and Marxism have the same philosophic
roots."
"The influence of John Dewey is that he can be recognized as the
pre-eminent factor in the collectivisation, or Hegelianization,
of American Schools," continues Sutton.
"Dewey believed education is not child-centered, but
state-centered because for a Hegelian, social ends are always
State ends. The misunderstanding between modern parents and the
educational system begins here. Parents believe a child goes to
school to learn skills to use in the adult world, but Dewey
states specifically that education is not a preparation for
future living. Its function, he believed, was to 'prepare the
child as a unit in an organic whole,'" concludes Sutton.
In other words, school is just a way to prepare kids to be cogs
in society. Welcome to the Machine. "Political dissent is not to
be tolerated" is a standard tenet of the AP "modus operandi."
According to Lukas, the AP's M.O. has been the same ever since.
"The Hayward case [the subject of Big Trouble] may have been the
first trial in American history in which the real target wasn't
so much the jurors in the box as the larger jury of public
opinion," he writes. "It bore the signs of a spectacular show
trial, a great national drama in which the stakes were nothing
less than the soul of the American people."
The soul of the American people remains the target of the Big
Media Cartel. Remember, when you see that AP symbol at the
beginning of a "news" story, think Associated Propaganda.
(Copyright 1999 Uri Dowbenko)
---------------------------------------------
Uri Dowbenko is a marketing consultant who heads a modular
agency with full service capabilities. He is one of America's
most prolific writers on the media. His reviews and articles
explore the psycho-political and historical context of
contemporary books, movies and pop culture. He is also Chairman
and CEO of New Improved Entertainment Corporation, a new company
actively seeking capitalization for an extensive slate of
politically incorrect feature film projects. Dowbenko's column
is published exclusively in Nitro News every week.
© 1999 Nitro New Media.